4o4 THE POLAND OF PILSUDSKI
on conditions. On May 2 the Government devalued its gulden
currency, establishing it on a new parity with the Polish zloty,
the previous parity having been one gulden to about i| zlotys. This
devaluation made prices of goods rise; the shops were infested
by crowds of anxious purchasers; the small savings of the poorer
classes were withdrawn from the banks, mostly in exchange for
other currencies which were thought to be good, or simply
for hoarding. Richer people followed suit, and the Banks were
compelled to ration the outflow of deposits, and then to shut their
doors. On June n it was semi-officially announced in Danzig
that the Polish Government and the Bank of Poland were
voluntarily assisting the Free City in supporting the rate of the
gulden. But this did not mean that Poland intended to guarantee
the gold value of the gulden; to put an end to the state of panic
that prevailed throughout the Free City and was hurtful to her
own interests, she adopted it only as a temporary expedient for
relieving the situation. In the Danzig Senate measures were passed
for restricting the export of money similar to those in force in
Germany, and these drew a sharp protest from Papee, the Polish
Commissary-General. Greiser in replying to the protest announced
a drastic economy programme, involving the discharge of hundreds
of civil servants and State-paid teachers, and cuts in expenditure
in various other ways. The Nazis put the blame for the crisis
on the Versailles Treaty, the world depression, and the competi-
tion of Gdynia, but a very big part of it was undoubtedly due
to their own extravagant administration. On June 14 Schacht,
the German Minister of Economics and President of the Reichs-
bank, arrived in Danzig, and told its people that drastic exchange
restrictions must be enforced. Beck, coming from Warsaw,
had conferred with Papee the day before with a view to supporting
Polish business interests, which were disastrously affected by
such restrictions, but Poland wished to avoid adding to the
embarrassments of the Danzig's Nazi Government, with which
she had worked more or less harmoniously for over a year, thanks
mainly to the pact with Hitler—and she had to consider him, too,
in dealing with the Free City. However, she pointed out that the
restrictions were illegal according to the 1921 Agreement, and